As a "minor sports specialist" who's been constantly frustrated by Quizbowl's America-centric sports distribution, I decided to take matters into my own hands and would like to announce the Self-Indulgent Neglected Sports side tournament, or SINS, scheduled for the Toronto ICT Mirror on Saturday, July 29th, following ICT. This will be a guerrilla tournament with optional pack submission. Topics can include any and all sports that aren't the "Big Three" of Quizbowl trash distribution (basketball, baseball, American football). Note that non-American leagues of these sports, such as the Canadian Football League and Nippon Professional Baseball, will also not be featured. This tournament will be played individually, and is free for all participants.

Submitted packets should be 20 questions long and tossups only, with optional powers. Joint pack submissions are welcome. The distribution of answerlines is as follows:

Place (country, city, venue, etc.) - 3Person/Team - 4Action (can be specific to a person, such as "Ronaldo scoring a goal") - 2Event - 3Media (e.g. films/memes/television about any of the other categories) - 1Free - 7

Since this is meant to be a self-indulgent affair, you can write about whatever you like and should feel no obligation to do additional research on topics you don't already know well. Similarly, my definition of what constitutes a sport has been pretty expansive so far (including things like chess and professional wrestling). However, since this isn't quite at Vanity-level and packets won't be edited beforehand, please try not to go overboard and exercise some discretion (e.g. no packets with 12 questions on netball or Nordic combined). There isn't a hard deadline for submissions; just have it ready by July 29th.

PM me if you'd like to participate, or if you have any questions. Let me know also if you'd like the packets or want to mirror the tournament elsewhere, since I plan on editing them before posting them online. Thanks!

I may write for this. Curious why college sports are not allowed given that the NBA has a very different fandom than NCAA men's basketball and stuff like women's basketball and softball is very under asked about in QB.

Harris BunkerGrosse Pointe North High School '15Michigan State University 2015-MSU Academic Competition Club President 2016-

Progcon wrote:I may write for this. Curious why college sports are not allowed given that the NBA has a very different fandom than NCAA men's basketball and stuff like women's basketball and softball is very under asked about in QB.

That's very fair, and truth be told the decision to exclude all "versions" of basketball, baseball, and American football was somewhat aribitrary. The goal was to focus on the "other" category of sports distribution, but you're right that women's basketball and softball are rarely included within the actual basketball/baseball distributions. I think I'll definitely expand the allowable sports/leagues in the future if I run this event again.

CPiGuy wrote:I won't be playing this (at least not at the main site); would you accept a freelance packet? This looks really fun.

Please note that the distribution requirements have been changed slightly and also elaborated upon. The "country" category is now "places" and requires three questions, and the "event" category also now requires three. Sorry for the inconvenience!

I'd definitely be interested in writing a freelance packet for this!Also, would there be any chance of a post-tournament IRC or Skype mirror of this set? It would be fun to play for us Yanks and Brits who can't make it up north for the main site.